


Something more

by grabmotte



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, How They Met, The Court of Miracles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 10:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7841464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grabmotte/pseuds/grabmotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes a home is a single person. Sometimes it is a trio of orphans. Sometimes it is an army. </p><p>Sometimes none of that is enough.</p><hr/><p>
  <i>Porthos considers the different kinds of families he's been a part of throughout his life. A coda to Porthos' storyline from s2, set shortly after s2e10.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something more

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to theonenamedafterahat for looking over this ficlet!

## I

Sometimes a home is a single person. Sometimes it is a single parent whose smiles are only for you. 

These smiles are among the strongest memories Porthos has left of his mother. Everything else he can remember is frayed, blurred around the edges, like a wet ink drawing.

Sometimes he will catch a movement out of the corners of his eyes and recall a gesture; the way her hands moved when she talked to other grown-ups, or the way she tilted her head when listening. 

Although the sound of her voice is lost to his conscious mind, if a word or a phrase jogs Porthos' memory he will even remember bits of the stories she told him. Fairy tales from a far-away country. They were stories of witches, and princes and bravery and young boys winning riches for their cleverness and courage.

But what he remembers most of all, what time has failed to blur, is her smile. Her smiles are sharp in his mind, images drawn with a freshly cut quill. These smiles are always wide, full of teeth. They rounded her cheeks and lifted the corners of her eyes. She took full advantage of what few moments had been granted in her life to make her smile. In Porthos' memories these moments usually involved him. He remembers the lines about her mouth and the glimmer in her eyes when they would play. He remembers the way she closed her eyes in joy whenever he brought her a present – no matter what it was, from an old coin to pressed flowers.

Her smiles are how he remembers her face – her changing face. Youthful images of his mother, preserved in Porthos' earliest memories, are overlaid by memories of hollowing cheeks, of her gaunt features.

Her smiles are how he knows the youthful face and the one aged prematurely are the same. He thinks that, although fewer lines mark his brow, that he must be older now than she ever was.

He thinks, even now, on the eve of war, that he has more than she ever had – a name, a reputation, a voice he can make heard.

Even by the standards of the Court of Miracles they never had much. Most inhabitants of the Court wouldn't talk bad of someone they considered their own, not to her orphaned son – at least when he was still a child. But Porthos knows she detested stealing and she detested mummery. She also detested begging, but sometimes it was the only path left open to her when no one needed a day-labourer heralding from the infamous Court. 

Growing up, he had wondered why a woman as wonderful and caring and warm as his mother couldn't be a maid to the burghers who gave her work occasionally – the merchants and innkeepers and magistrates. Surely they would have loved her? Surely she would manage any task they put her to with a diligence and care they hadn't known before, especially if Porthos helped her? She had been strong enough once, hadn't she? Back then he could still remember how she had carried him. He remembered feeling safe and warm in her arms. She hadn't always been so frail and aged beyond her years, had she?

As a boy, Porthos had decided that there should be something more for him and his mother.

If the rich people would only give her a chance, they could both live in a house with an actual fireplace and a room of their own. They would not have to worry about staying warm most of the year, and his mother would wear dresses that didn't need patching day after day after day. 

Porthos wasn't stupid. Even as a boy he realised she'd once lived in such a house just from the richness of detail of the stories she told about princes and traitorous noblemen.

But there never was an actual fireplace for the two of them. Just a hut they shared with other inhabitants of the Court. For the longest time that had been enough. For even on days when she had received only looks of sympathy at best in lieu of coin, Porthos' mother had still giving him all she had, which was herself. 

But sympathies and dreams don't feed you for long. 

His mother had never told him how she had found her way to the Court. If she had, Porthos had been too young to remember. Now, Porthos thinks, perhaps he could have guessed. 

"Keep away from soldiers," she had told him once, when Porthos begged to watch the parades on the King's birthday. "You'd be the only good man among them."

Porthos no longer wonders about these things. He now understands how she came to stay at the Court as much as he understands her wariness of the nobility. He understands her inability to leave the Court and become once more the woman she had been before she had been sent down the road to ruin. Even if there had been the slightest chance one of the women who gave her work from time to time ever saying 'yes' if she proposed to become their servant, Marie-Cessette would never have asked.

The servant's quarters in a merchant's house would never be home to Porthos.

Fortunately.

## II

Home is a family of chance.

Porthos wasn't always as wise as he is now. During his childhood he couldn't have imagined how hard what remained of his family of blood would fail him. 

Once his mother had passed away, home had been two orphans like him. They made a formidable trio: Charon, Flea and Porthos. While the rest of the world watched them with contempt, the Court had been their kingdom. But while it provided them with all the freedoms a different child might desire they came at a cost. 

They ran wild, they played and they fought. Outside of the Court they stole and they cheated. The adults of the Court didn't care what these children without parents got up to – so long as they paid their share. There was no luxury but what Porthos and his friends made for themselves. Whoever couldn't pay their share, whoever couldn't carry their weight, they were the last to be clothed and the last to eat. The orphans carried the responsibility of earning their place in the Court every day. 

There is a hierarchy even to the Court of the Wretched where every man is supposedly free.

Free of money. Free of rights.

Porthos never went home to the Court with empty hands. He was the best thief around. The adults learned to use his talents quickly. There was always an opportunity waiting for him, a job someone would arrange for him. And if they were mean enough to try and cheat him out of his share, well – he grew up fast and tall, and quickly learned to use his fists.

With every passing year, as his understanding of the world around him grew, it bothered Porthos more and more that in order to survive he did things his mother had despised. But what mattered to him just as much, was that stealing allowed him to help his friends. Flea and Charon were both clever and they might have managed on their own, but there was always more for each of them when they worked together – and since Flea was small and Charon was lanky as a weed, whenever Porthos worked with them there was more they would get to _keep_. 

To have friends in the Court to save you from having to rely on the charity of strangers was invaluable. With no one else to look after them they were each other's greatest treasure. 

But deep down, in their hearts, they each carried the hope of something more. 

As orphans in a world that had no care for children without a guardian, none of them could have imagined that having a family of blood would not make things better. 

They overheard people, rich people, talking of their daughters marrying wealthy heirs, of their sons becoming masters of one trade or other. Talk of inheritance and blood lines, and feuds and family honour was everywhere around them when they ventured out of the Court. It was as ubiquitous as the pity the orphans received for growing up bereft of the blessing of holy parents and the wisdom and guidance of their elders. Tutelage and trades were barred to them for lack of a family name. 

A family of blood stuck together, they learned. A family of blood wouldn't have born seeing their children grow up in squalor. A family of blood would never allow an orphan to run the streets of Paris.

Their talk made Porthos' fists itch. He wanted to tell them that his mother's love and guidance had been good enough. But the hotter his anger grew, the more her image faded.

Even that memory was more than some of the Court's orphans had.

Even though the bourgeois pity upset them the lesson stuck in their heads: a family, a real family stuck together _just_ because it was family. Not because they were stronger together. Not because they needed each other's help. Not because they had fun together. 

Just because it was family. A perfect, proper, rich family. 

It became been their deepest secret, shared only between the three of them: the fantasy of the uncle or father who had believed them lost for years descending into the Court and taking them away to where they would have fine clothes of velvet and silk (Flea claimed she knew what that was because she had cleaned her dirty hand on a fine woman's dress once who hadn't noticed until she'd returned to her carriage). They would have the all the fat meat and all the fresh, sweet fruit they could eat. They would live as princes and look down from the backs of tall, white horses with shining coats and braided manes upon the burghers that chased and spat on them now. 

It was a fantasy kept in the darkest place of their hearts, reserved for the coldest, harshest nights. It was when one of them got beaten up by one of the grown-ups that they imagined a home in which they would be protected by their parents and siblings and cousins. Sharing the fantasy brought them closer together.

They didn't realise then that what they dreamt of meant leaving each other.

But as they grew older, their home began looking smaller. Sharing the day's haul among them every day was no longer enough.

Porthos could take care of himself and his two friends, but with every day that he stayed in the Court he saw the pain and the squalor of those around him more clearly. Not even their king could raise them up. 

How could he? He lived by a code of honour, but it was still the honour of thieves. He was the King of an army of thieves and beggars, but he was still a beggar. He merely wore the brightest mummer's clothes of them all.

Porthos couldn't accept that this should be the end to his ambitions: Wear the brightest costume and eat the best of the worst food in the company of people who took money off children. It was a living, but it was not the life Porthos wanted. It was not the life he'd dreamed about listening to his mother's stories. If he stayed here, he'd never become the clever prince who could have lifted his mother to the status she deserved.

The kind of hearth she'd helped him imagine wasn't to be found in the Court of Miracles.

There were no untold riches to be won by courage, and no witches to slay. Just old women abandoned by their kin, fighting over scraps of fat to eat. 

The real witches were out there, banishing children and their mothers to this place after chasing them out of their great houses. None of them would ever descent into the Court to look after a lost child to raise up – they would only come to devour them. 

Porthos knew there was more he could do outside: More for himself, and more for his family. Outside of the Court, where the witches dwelled.

The Court was a home, but not a home for forever.

Everything that he fancied could help him leave and fit in with the world outside woke a hunger within Porthos. He started picking up pamphlets, stealing every scrap of paper he could get his hands on. There was no man in the Court who could read fluently – or that admitted to it – but by bribing every man and woman in the Court who claimed to know their letters with whatever he could spare, Porthos learned. 

He would later laugh at what little it was what they taught him (fondly, always fondly. He never entertained a cruel thought for the boy his mother had raised), but back then it opened a world for him.

Flea was clever, but she only helped him in this endeavour reluctantly. She knew what these letters were for and where he hoped they would take him. 

His friends called him a fool, of course. The outsiders would never accept him. He'd always be the boy from the Court to them.

But Porthos had long lost his heart to the new path he saw opening before him. He was tall, he was strong, he was still young. Something had to be out there waiting for him that didn't require him to do the things his mother had taught him to despise.

After the first time they had spoken of it Flea became angry every time Porthos watched a troop of soldiers march in their shining breastplates. There were tears in her eyes every time he watched the sunlight catch on the polished metal of their helmets and weapons and their horses' silver tack.

But tears couldn't hold him back. It was time.

He hadn't forgotten his mother's words. But, young man that he was, Porthos didn't intend to be a good man among soldiers – he intended to be the best of them. 

Sometimes a family of chance is a trio of orphans.

Sometimes chance isn't enough.

Sometimes, there needs to be something more.

One day, when Porthos served in the infantry, as he and his comrades were cooking large snails in a sizzling pan over a fire, the camp cook told Porthos about animals that carry their homes on their back – all edible with the right seasoning. Of course Porthos knew about crabs and snails, although he had only ever eaten the latter, but he hadn't known that snails grew their houses from their bodies and that their houses grew with them throughout their lives. Or that some crabs threw off the shells they carried on their backs as they grew out of them. That day he learned that a crab that didn't leave its shell would be crushed by the confinements of its static home.

The image stuck with him, even after their cook was killed in a raid a few weeks later. Porthos would always remember his words. 

Flea, Porthos realised, was a snail, creating her world around her, changing and growing with it – all shimmering mother-of-pearl on the inside. 

Porthos himself was a hermit crab, looking for ever larger shells to hold his dreams.

Charon, poor Charon, as Porthos found out many years later, had pretended to the world to be a snail until the weight of his shell crushed him.

A snail's house makes a fine home for a boy, but it's not large enough for a man.

## III

Home is an army, providing a man with direction, a purpose, a future.

Mainly, it provided money – that is, after the first few weeks had passed, during which Porthos' pay had been docked to cover the cost of his equipment. 

It didn't bother Porthos. 

This was the poor, bloody infantry. There were no tall, white horses to be had and no silver tack.

But this didn't bother Porthos either.

Here no one bothered about his past. Here was his chance to find out what life outside of the Court had to offer and he was yet at the beginning of his journey. Already he had been given his own sword was learning how to use it. 

Here no one looked down on anyone. No sons of the nobility were found here – at least none that could still mention their family name with pride. Everyone here was either running from something or running towards something else – more often than not that something else turned out to be a musket ball.

Poor, bloody infantry.

Porthos endured what he had to and leapt at every chance that presented itself to him. Every duty that needed a volunteer he volunteered for – from scouting an enemy entrenchment to digging latrines. He tackled every menial task his superiors threw at him with the determination to leave his fellow recruits in the dust behind him. 

When one of the quartermaster's young servants lost his head to cannon ball, Porthos volunteered to take his place. Having earned himself the reputation of a diligent worker he was accepted, and soon added simple sums to his letters.

Yet, while his dreams grew and grew, his ambitions set him apart from his fellow soldiers. The brotherhood he had imagined to find with his comrades remained superficial.

The infantry made a spacious home for a boy's dreams, with a lot of room to grow, but it wasn't much of a family at all.

The King's army, too, was not enough.

Until the day came that the young King tasked one of his most trusted officers to raise a new guard regiment under his leadership. 

That regiment was to become the King's own musketeers, a kind of mounted infantry, and the officer's name was Treville.

Porthos had heard of Treville. It was a time when it was impossible to be a boy interested in all things military and not have heard of Treville. The man had come to fame under the late King Henri, who had made him a part of his Court – not for his nobility, but for his valour. It was said that he had once infiltrated a city occupied by Spain on his own and freed a band of captured French soldiers. It was said that he had once been shot through the leg during a charge but stayed on his horse until the enemy had been driven off, because seeing him fall would have disheartened his men. It was said that once during a campaign, on seeing that an allied fortress would fall before reinforcements arrived, Treville had ridden to relieve the fortress with nothing but a single troop of chevaulegers. He had lead the charge with such ferocity that the men garrisoned in the fortress had taken heart and sallied forth for one last sortie that had bound the enemy until reinforcements finally arrived.

When Porthos met him for the first time his only thought was that he'd imagined the famed warrior to be taller. 

(Now, wiser and sadder, Porthos thinks that Treville's first thought about him had likely been nothing out of the ordinary. He can't remember a look of recognition from the newly minted Captain – no widening of the eyes, no twitching brow. Porthos can't remember a single sign that would have suggested Treville knew who he was when he picked from the lowest ranks of the King's army to serve in the most prestigious regiment France had ever seen. Porthos can't remember anything that implies Treville knew he had found Belgard's son, and he prays he isn't just fooling himself.)

Porthos remembers that day well. Word had spread through the ranks that Treville had been tasked to raise a new regiment, that he himself would command. The King's own musketeers would protect their King's life in the field and be beholden to no one but their King and their Captain.

And it was said that Treville chose the men to fill the ranks of this regiment by recommendation, picking among the sons of the nobility, but also the sons of magistrates and judges and traders. Commoners.

Before the day Porthos met Treville these were all rumours. Rumours to make Porthos dream.

When Treville finally came to inspect Porthos' regiment – when they assembled, standing to attention before the famous soldier as he passed through rank and file, listening to the remarks of their commanding officers – Porthos dreamed, and hoped, and prayed.

And Treville picked Porthos.

Building the new regiment was hard work. Training was harder than before. Treville was a strict teacher and hard to please (Porthos never heard as many filthy curses as during musketeer training, either in the Court of Miracles or the infantry). But this time there were horses (eventually, after the wooden training dummies that had left the recruits with a sore groin every day). Porthos' first horse wasn't white, and he didn't dare braid its mane, but he thought it the best horse in France regardless and it made him bear any hardship with pride.

Porthos had been picked.

Porthos was not a nobleman. Still isn't, despite–

Porthos was not even a trader's son. Porthos was lower than a commoner in the eyes of the world, and yet he had been picked. He had been invited to the hearth.

Sometimes home feels like an act of validation.

## IV

Sometimes, if you are lucky, family means blood.

Porthos clearly remembers, that when he has been a child, dreaming of a life outside the Court, a family of blood had seemed the only proper family. No one teaches children that they have to be lucky to be born into a home of love. No one taught that to Porthos. He had to learn it for himself.

As Porthos gathers those of his belongings that he'll take with him on campaign, his hand hesitates over the small shelf where he keeps his books, most of them borrowed. Some of them he has kept far longer than he needed, far longer than he normally would – because for the longest time the owner wouldn't give him a chance to return them, because returning them usually involved talking – about the books, about Porthos, about everything – openly. 

"It's addressed to the Seigneur de Marillac," Porthos remembers himself saying. He hadn't thought anything of it at the time, dutifully looking straight ahead as Treville took the letter from him to open it.

"You read."

"Yeah, I do." Porthos looked straight at his Captain's face, ready to defend the honour of the slums he grew up in. He was prepared to defend his mother's legacy and the world that had gifted him his first true friends, even if it cost him his post. 

But when he looked at Treville he found nothing but honest delight on the Captain's face. 

"Do you enjoy reading?"

"Yes," Porthos answered, taken aback, tacking on "Sir" like an afterthought. 

"Good." It was all Treville said to him about the subject before he dismissed Porthos to deal with the letter. 

But when Porthos returned to his office to report at the end of his watch Treville invited him to stay. There was a stack of books on his desk, actual leather-bound volumes, not the stacks of paper Porthos sometimes got his hands on, and he asked Porthos if he would like to borrow any of them. 

There were manuals on fencing and on horsemanship. There was a history of the sword. There were essays on the place of Man in God's universe, travel-logs, medieval poetry, and a volume of fables.

Porthos fought a wave of shyness at the thought that, yes, please, he'd like to take all of them.

Treville wore a solemn face as he gave Porthos a short abstract on each volume, but his pleasure at sharing a passion with his musketeer became evident when Porthos kept returning for more.

Reading at night, by the light of a candle (as the Captain had expressly warned him not to do. Porthos was a decent shot and France still had a use for his eye-sight), Porthos had longed to give something back. But how to go about it? The Captain clearly didn't expect anything from him, and besides, none of the stories Porthos knew growing up were in books. They had been in his mother's heart, in Charon's, in Flea's. 

Sometimes, when he didn't read, Porthos would take a swig of wine to take a heart and write instead. He created his own travel logs of journeys made for the King, and he wrote down the stories his mother told him. He hadn't quite ever mustered the courage to share either, except, once or twice, hidden, folded between the pages of a borrowed book, an excerpt from the latter.

Porthos didn't think much of his skill but he never stopped reading or writing and soon found himself practicing with Aramis as well, who had revealed himself to have quite a mind for poetry – all kinds of poetry. 

There are just some things you share with your friends rather than with your—

Your—

Lately, in the light of the evening, the books, the tutoring and the praise appear to Porthos like an admission of guilt, or, at best, an apology. Porthos doesn't want these thoughts. But he didn't want for his mother to die that way either.

Sometimes, things, thoughts, just happen.

Often, parents make the most imperfect of families. They make mistakes like anybody else, and rarely are their children taught that they are not obliged to forgive their trespasses. Parents can be banished from the home like everybody else. Ties don't bind just because blood is blood.

Since he met his father Porthos understands that blood is not what makes a family. It's not enough.

It was not blood that made his mother smile at him through her despair. 

Blood has nothing to do with love. Blood can't force you to care for someone.

As Porthos continues his packing, as his eyes fall onto the weapons rack, polished blades gleaming in the light of the fireplace, he studies the old sword with the elegant, swept hilt that came into his possession so recently. Its blade looks as straight as ever and the books once more become what they always were: acts of validation.

Home are the people who fight to keep their place at our side. 

Family, trust, forgiveness – is a work in progress.

## V

Home are the people we didn't know we needed before we met them.

A horse is a fine thing for a young man, as is a teacher, but neither can replace the people Porthos left behind when he abandoned his shell just as it had threatened to confine him. Neither, to be quite clear, can anyone else, but sometimes we come across people who create new spaces in our hearts. 

Hearts are homes as well and Porthos can't bring himself to believe that they are anything other than like snail's houses.

Sometimes home are the people who need us.

The regiment was still young when Aramis left for the training mission in Savoy.

For a few weeks it looked as though the regiment wouldn't recover. As though the young King would have to abandon his pet project before it had even taken off.

For a few weeks it looked as though not even their Captain would recover, as he seemed to Porthos older, greyer, every time he went to see the sole survivor of the massacre – Aramis – who, as it would, appeared the one out of the three least likely to recover. 

This was no surprise to Porthos, once he found out few other people visited the wounded man. It appeared that the men he had been closest too had all been on that training mission with him, which didn't strike Porthos as particularly fair. A man could be expected to do a lot on his own, but clawing his way back from death's door was a bit much to ask.

So he sat with Aramis often during those weeks, taking his reading and writing with him. Sometimes he even read to him; the poor man needed something to occupy his time and to bind up his fractured mind as he lay recovering from – from whatever had truly occurred in that forest in Savoy. But more and more he just sat talking with Aramis, watching him slowly become more talkative. He learned that Aramis loved the written word just as much – if for more entertaining purposes than learning about the history of Venetian trade ships. He loved wine, his guns, the Lord and women. And he had broken up with (lost?) his lover right before (at?) Savoy. Aramis didn't enjoy talking about the training mission that had ended in a massacre and Porthos never dreamt of pressing him. (Never).

He promised instead to take Aramis out to his favourite tavern if he recovered. That happened about two weeks later, when Porthos made one of those rare memories that no bitterness can taint and that no regret ever touches (not even now that— no—! There won't even be wistfulness).

It was with Aramis that Porthos first found the camaraderie he had sought when he had first become a soldier. This fact remained, no matter what else happened in their lives. (Even now, Porthos is incapable of feeling anything about these moments of budding friendship but the gratefulness he felt then).

Aramis became like the brother Porthos had dreamed of when he had overheard other people speak of family as a child. 

His dreams had never involved just one brother.

Porthos didn't like Athos at first and he suspected the feeling was mutual. The man was close-lipped and kept to himself. There were rumours that he was a Comte or a Marquis in disguise or something equally fanciful, and while Porthos prided himself on an open mind it was hard to ignore the niggling suspicions that Athos thought himself above associating with the commoners and worse among his brothers-in-arms.

But the Captain had made the King commission Athos regardless, and given him the unenviable task of leading the musketeers' sword practice (before Treville burst a vessel at their ineptitude) and so they had to arrange themselves with him. 

Porthos' initial plan of breaking Athos' arrogant shell by humbling him by beating him in a duel went nowhere since Athos beat him, Aramis, and everyone who tried, every time. 

Aramis even offered to spill a pack of musket balls during a training session to trip Athos up as he fought Porthos, but Athos stepped around the balls with a confidence as though they weren't there, never missing a beat. At least the session had taught Porthos to never again underestimated the importance of footwork in a fight.

Athos finally showed his true colours in the place Porthos least expected.

Porthos hadn't even realised that Athos had started going to the same taverns as he and Aramis. But one evening, he was just there. Sitting at a lonely table in a shadowed corner, nursing a bottle wine all on his own, witnessing Porthos being caught cheating at cards.

"You bastard!" his opponent yelled, crushing the extra King Porthos had procured from his sleeve under his heel.

He was losing his touch. This had never happened to him when he had been in a boy in the Court of Miracles.

"You cheating worm!"

The man's insults had nothing on the creative curses Porthos had learned in the Court, let alone from the Captain. But they attracted the attention of the other customers. From the way the crowd assembled around him, the man was either very popular, or the tavern's clientele taken a dislike to musketeers – perhaps because of their devilish luck at cards. Porthos was sure they could have taken half a dozen of them. A score of them would have been a challenge. There were more than a score of them.

"You— Gutter scum! Go back to your filthy beggar's Court!" 

The man kicked away his stool, making room as though he intended to throw himself at the musketeer. Beside Porthos, Aramis stirred.

"You better sit down, friend. Porthos here is one of the King's most decorated musketeers."

It wasn't quite the truth. The regiment hadn't had a chance yet to test itself, but Porthos' chest swelled with pride nonetheless – just to go along with Aramis' story.

"The King's—?" The man did not sit down again. He was getting only more agitated. "A rat like this in our King's palace? That bloody Gascon lost his mind."

Porthos cracked his knuckles and Aramis winced.

"Careful. That's our Captain you're slandering."

The man smiled and picked up his stool. "There are many more things I could say about your Captain."

Porthos was sure he would have given a better performance if the flying stool hadn't grazed his shoulder. But even then they might have subdued the crowd eventually without any help, if a cup of wine to the face hadn't blinded Aramis for a few precious seconds.

He had to hand it to the crowd. Not everyone could put Porthos in a chokehold; particularly not for long enough to make him see stars.

Sometimes home are the people who know how to make us accept their help.

Even with half a bottle of cheap wine coursing through his veins, Athos' footwork is as impeccable as ever, and it's as useful in a fistfight as it is in a duel. 

Some things can bring a family closer together. Such as being thrown out of a tavern after winning a bar fight against impossible odds.

In the years that followed, Porthos didn't ever think anything could break their trio apart. Not learning about Athos' past; not learning about Treville's. Not fighting the Cardinal, Rochefort, Milady. Learning about the village Athos had abandoned didn't diminish the respect Porthos held him in as his brother-in-arms. Learning of Aramis' relations with the Queen didn't kill his love for his friend.

As Porthos watched Aramis leave for the monastery he told himself it's for the better. It'll save him from becoming like Porthos' father. 

Parts of the home fight to stay. Their nature changes but they remain part of your foundation, perhaps made stronger. Others just can't – the crab has to leave the house or be crushed, no matter how much he will miss it.

Aramis needs something more.

When Athos left Porthos didn't need to ask where he was going. He didn't dare asking him if he was planning to come back.

While Porthos knows in his heart that they are forever bound by friendship, they hadn't been as close as they had once been for a while now. But although there are new connections to make, new relationships to pursue, it doesn't stop the hurt.

Athos needs something else.

Family is not closing the door while he goes and finds it.

A person that leaves takes part of home with them. Sometimes home becomes smaller without them.

Porthos knows now that Athos returned. He knows that even as his Captain they'll stay close (being a Captain is no obstacle to caring; this is one of the greatest truths Porthos knows). He still has d'Artagnan, and there are Treville and Constance who will keep his home safe for him – the one he can't carry within him.

Some parts of the home change. New people enter the house, making it bigger. 

And some people leave. Because they need something more.

Porthos hopes that one day he'll find out what that is – the thing that will prevent him from leaving again, too, that lets him know he has found his forever home – if such a thing exists. 

He suspects it has to do with creating a home where a woman is always warm and can smile at her children without regrets.

He suspects it has to do with teaching your children to pass on the stories you share.

He suspects it is a place with an open door for anyone who wants to return.

He longs for a place where he can write down another copy of his mother's stories. They are stories to be read at the hearth in a big house, where no mother will ever have to go hungry to feed her children. They are stories to be read to a child - his child.

Porthos wonders whether he'll ever call any of these things his own – and if he does, whether he can make a home of it, and take better care of it than what remains of his family of blood ever could.


End file.
